These notes written by Rose Sent to GMU 27 September 27, 2007. This group of documents is significant because they are what John Warfield collected and then taught in 2007, and it was the last workshop he ever did, although he was plainly collecting these items to have ready for another workshop if he could get sponsors to support it in the future. At the time he taught this summer short course he was hoping the content would become a basis for a System Science program in a university, maybe at University of Missouri, where Dagli was just beginning the program and waiting for funding to continue if Boeing got the contract.
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This was a short course held at the York Terrace Baptist Church in Sheffield, Alabama, July 11-15, 2007. Joe Simpson, an employee of Boeing Corporation, was working on an advanced degree a Doctorate in Systems Engineering at University of Missouri at Rolla. He persuaded Dr. Cihan Dagli, chair of the Systems Engineering department to consider starting a doctoral program in Systems Science, and to come to Sheffield and listen to John Warfield discuss what, in Warfield's opinion, such a doctoral program of studies should contain, in other words, to learn about Warfield's systems science ideas. Warfield said that he would teach a class free if the visitors wanted to come to Sheffield to get the instruction. Joe, his wife Mary and Professor Dagli came. John Warfield asked Henry Alberts and his wife to come also, so that Henry and Renée would be able to help with the discussion and save John's voice. John was afraid his voice might wear out if he talked for three days. John Warfield wanted Renée to be there for her input on importance of behavioral aspects. (Renée is a clinical psychologist).
At first there was a problem about the venue for the sessions. John Warfield suggested the Warfield home, but it was decided that effective display and work space for this number of people would require a conventional conference room. Marriott Motel, where the Simpsons stayed, had such a space but the fee was pretty high. Warfield's nephew Mike Boston suggested the small conference room at York Avenue Baptist Church, where Mike was not only the volunteer technical staff for the church, but also a member in good standing. The church was decided upon. Mike rounded up electronic equipment, monitors, computers, display screens, and the like. Mike was also recruited as the caterer, a valuable part of the program because Warfield did not want his audience to interrupt the sessions by leaving the room to go find restaurants. Every day lunch was served right in the conference room so that the sessions could continue with minimal distractions. Mike's wife Ann baked and sent muffins and cake each day. Professor Cihan Dagli arrived on the way back from a meeting in Italy; Henry and Renée came by air from Washington D.C. and Joe and Mary came from Seattle.
John Warfield produced a set of two spiral-bound booklets as handouts for the attendees. He also sent a few study materials in advance to the participants. As part of the workshop he showed videos of some of the Ford Workshops. He wrote out his own comments on scenes in the videos to be included in the spiral-bound manual given as a handout. John Warfield prepared the spiral-bound booklets himself at his home office. He had hoped to have the booklets printed and bound commercially but he discovered that in Sheffield, Alabama it would be a complex and uncertain undertaking. He just gave up and did it himself to be sure it was done right. He printed all the pages on his HP printer, then used his home spiral binder machine to assemble the booklets.
The main thrust of John Warfield's systems science short course was to give reason and cause for a doctoral program which Warfield felt should have not only theoretical studies but also empirical active application of the Warfield Work Program of Complexity (WPOC), whereby graduate students using only two tools, NGT and ISM, would deal with problem situations of real corporations or government agencies or other client groups. Warfield envisioned the doctoral course as having not only a deep foundation in philosophy, history and theory, but also a case load to be completed, not a dissertation to be written.
Students working as interns with actual case loads would begin at the beginning with Nominal Group Technique and end when the problem situations had been processed completely through a Warfield Work Plan of Complexity and when options had been chosen and then enacted in real life. Rather than scholarly dissertations on theory, the writing of useful IM Reports based on a successful process would serve as doctoral qualification. Other systems studies and other systems management tools would be used only as subsidiary to the work plans created through use of ISM.
The visitors came, they listened, they ate lunches at the York Terrace Baptist Church, they seemed interested. John Warfield was invited by Dr. Dagli to give a seminar at University of Missouri-Rolla in September, but Warfield had a cataract operation coming and said he couldn't fly or be ready to do any seminar until about November, after Tom Warfield's wedding. So maybe Prof Dagli will invite him for a seminar in November or next Spring. Whether a doctoral program ensues is anybody's guess. There is no document dealing completely with JohnWarfield's lectures for the course, since a lot of it was answers to questions. For example Joe Simpson wanted to know more about mathematics involved whereby ISM is able to fill the matrices by inference, and John Warfield spent an hour or so explaining that.
Here is a list of the documents and videos used by Warfield in the course.
SYSTEMS SCIENCE PROGRAM PART 1, Yellow manual, 57 pages containing printouts of papers and slides. Pages 1-3 is a 12-part outline of the short course divided into segments so that visitors could select the areas of most interest to them; John would attempt to discuss those segments first. In Warfield's numbering system on these pages, the capital letter "M" means Major topic, while the Arabic numerals refer to subtopics. Pages 4-57 contain 39 different documents, mostly excerpts from a variety of Warfield publications and writings. All 39 are itemized in the "Contents" list at front of the manual. The documents are chiefly figures or copies of PowerPoint slides, interspersed with written text by Warfield.
SYSTEMS SCIENCE PROGRAM PART 2, Green manual, 55 pages. This booklet holds printouts of 7 of the MANAGING THE UNMANAGEABLE series of PowerPoint slide shows. At the front of the booklet a four-page introduction describes and discusses each of the slide presentations. At the end is a reference list of books, papers and talks from Warfield's vita.
WHAT QUESTIONS HAVE BEEN FORMULATED AND ANSWERED…COMPLEXITY?, 29P pages. A spiral-bound white manual in a Q & A format written in 1998 for a Ford Motor Company workshop.
COMPLEXITY: A COGNITIVE BARRIER TO DEFENSE SYSTEMS ACQUISITION MGT Tony Perino's doctoral dissertation, 164 pages.
FORD MOTOR COMPANY INTERACTIVE MANAGEMENT REPORTS . These are Copies of three or four different Interactive Management Reports, demonstrating the extent of work involved in a Warfield Work Program of Complexity "The Ford-GM Saginaw Steering Pump Data Exchange Pilot".; "The Direct Engineering Pilot for A/C Hose Design-Manufacture"; (Box 13, Folder 15 ) " IM Workshop On Product Information Management At Ford Motor Company" January 24, 1994”;(Box 13 , Folder 18) also draft materials on same workshop;, (Box 23, Folder 10) "Strategy Development For CAD/CAM/CAE & PIM Support Of Pd2000-,"Ford Motor PDd Systems 1994-1995” (Box 13 , Folder 12 )
NOTES TO ACCOMPANY DVDs FOR TWO FORD MOTOR COMPANY IM WORKSHOPS (Two documents):
"Notes on the Ford Culture 5th Interactive Management Workshop on the Analytical Powertrain";
"Notes on the Ford Product Information Management (PIMS) Workshop".
DVD RECORDINGS OF TWO FORD MOTOR COMPANY WORKSHOPS (two albums):
"Product Information Management IM Workshop" January 11-14, 1994, 13 disks; (Box 88 in Warfield Special Collection Fenwick Library)
"Analytical Powertrain Workshop" (The Culture Workshop) December 9-11, 1992, 8 disks. (Box 88 in Warfield Special Collection Fenwick Library)
INTERPRETIVE STRUCTURAL MODELING SOFTWARE:
Free DOS version "GMU DOS-BASED PC ISM SOFTWARE" One 3 1/2 inch floppy disk.
John Warfield also gave them a copy of the Windows version of ISM software "GMU ISM Software for Windows").
ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTS (all going to GMU Warfield Special Collection in 2007) "Enterprise Integration of Product Development Data: Systems Science in Action" by Staley; "System Science serves Enterprise Integration: a Tutorial" by Warfield; "The Aristotle Index: Measuring Complexity in the 21st Century" by Warfield; "Brochure: Where to Buy Warfield Books"; "An Effective Approach to Manage Complexity of Organizations: The Structure - Based Science of Complexity," by Warfield and Song, [John N. Warfield, Xuefeng Song], March 2000; "The Comparison Among the Schools of Science of Complexity," by Warfield and Song, [John N. Warfield, Song Xuefeng], August 2000.
In summary: Lots and lots of material on this 4 or 5 day workshop has been saved on Rose’s Dell computer, and all of the handout manuals and documents John Warfield gave the attendees have also been sent to George Mason University, where they are listed individually by separate title of each document. Rose has saved much of it also on the computer, trying to put the related items altogether as a SERIES, series title is "July 2007 Summer Short Course." In addition to the few manuals and papers sent to GMU there is a huge unsorted mess of documents connected with this short course, which are on Rose's Dell home computer in the folder "Systems Science in a University Setting." Also Dan has some more hard copy papers from this course at his home in the storage box labelled JOHN’S WORKS IN PROGRESS . Dan took the box to store at his house on 23 June 23, 2013.
r.w. Circa September 2007, with a few updates 27 April 27, 2014
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